Chapter 2
Jurgen Moltmann to whom I has
already reffered several times, because he is the leader of Protestant
theology-after-Auschwitz, said in 1978:"To built the bridge from the
Jewish to the gentile shore and the reverse can certainly take place only in
the experience of a common suffering... It is imaginable, and I expect, that
Jews and Christians one day will undergo a common persecution and then will
discover the redeeming love of God that binds them at the most profound
level"/ibid.p 67/. It is strange enough, though understandable, that this
famous German theologian overlooked that such common persecution of Christians
and Jews already happened in Russia in the XX-th century. What follows, as well
as what has been already said, is nothing else but results of analysis of this
historical experience.
To look at my subject in another
way, I would like to touch upon some historical and psychological aspects of
the problem of anti-Semitism in the Russian Orthodox Church, this time in the
context of the world-wide Ecumenical movement.
An important issue for the Western
Ecumenical movement is the relationship between Christians and Jews. One aspect
of that relationship and the dialogue which should ensue from it, is the
post-Auschwitz theology, elaborated and understood by many Christians in the
West as a form of atonement for "Christian guilt".
In Russia we have no analogy to
this theology. We have no analogy to this theology because the Russian people
underwent a different experience. Instead of Nazism, we had Communism, which,
instead of the Holocaust inflicted as its largest wound on our consciousness
the Gulag.
So, what we need is post-Kolyma
theology (to name the location of the worst labour camps in the Gulag). It
would be essential to compare the lessons from Kolyma and Auschwitz, but I
reserve this task for the future in order to draw your attention solely to the
situation in our Orthodox Church.
The fact is that the most
conservative among Russian Orthodox Christians use anti-Semitism to oppose any
kind of ecumenical dialogue - - be it Jewish - Christian dialogue or Russian
Orthodox dialogue with other Christian bodies. They argue that Western
Christianity, abandoning the teaching of the Fathers particularly on the Jewish
problem, has been captured by Jews; and their specific evidence for this and
their target is post-Auschwitz theology.
Still, before we perhaps too
eagerly accuse these Russian Orthodox circles of complicity in the Nazi attempt
to exterminate the Jews or even attribute doctrinaire anti-Semitism to them - I
would like to remind you of a point I made earlier: that Russia's experience
differed from that of the West. Russia did not experience Nazism, Russia
experience Communism.
We must keep this in mind because
that experience has kept free-speaking, open, and liberal Russian Orthodox
Christians in dialogue which their conservative counterparts in the Russian
Church. And this is very important, to some extent because conservatives are
quite influential in the Church and through dominance in the Church affect
society at large.
So, as I see it, the first and the
most important ecumenical task for liberal Russian Orthodox Christians is to
maintain the dialogue within our own Russian Orthodox Church. This poses great
difficulties and problems; among them that of anti-Semitism.
We all know some of these
difficulties and problems, especially as we identify ourselves with one side or
another. It appears to me that the burden or task of initiating a dialogue lies
with the liberal Christians. The isolationist or separatist tendencies of
conservative inhibit conservatives from initiating dialogue, and these
tendencies create certain dangers for both Church and society.
In initiating dialogue, the liberal
must be open to any aspect of truth which may come from the conservatives. And
the liberal must be alert to conservative premises, ready to help clarify them
because often the conservative has not recognised them. Love for them, as
fellow human beings, as fellow-Christians, is what establishes the need and
desire to communicate with them, even when irrationality seems so evident and
strong. And who knows: what if they represent our own unconsciousness).
Now, with this ground work, I
return to the Jewish problem in the Russian context. As I noted, the greatest
wound in Russian history is Communism. And the fact is, many Jews played an
active role in the Revolution. I clearly remember that as recently as ten years
ago, my Jewish relatives proudly declared that the Russian Revolution was
created by Jews. Of course, that is an exaggeration, but we must have it in
mind that if the Jews themselves were(and are) saying such things, it is not
surprising that some Russian Orthodox would say the same thing.
We must also take into account the
fact that the Communist Revolution was atheistic - that it was not only opposed
to the bourgeoisie, but to the Church as well. Moreover, millions of those who
were killed in the labour camps during the Russian Revolution were
Christians(though not all of them, of course). Russian clergymen and monks were
the first martyrs in the atheistic revolution. Already in the late thirties and
especially after the war the situation radically changed and Jews themselves
became the victims of Stalin's camps. But immediately after the revolution
emancipated Jews, Jews who abandoned their own tradition, were the most
valuable agents in the Communist attempts to destroy the Church. /Fr. Alexander
Men once said: When a Jew betrays his dedication to God he betrays himself and
easily finds himself in the power of dark forces. Being chosen is a great and
terrible responsibility.(Vestnik RHD 117, 1976 p 113)/.
Here I would like to recall another
personal experience: some of my Jewish relatives, older men, sometimes proudly,
sometimes bitterly said that among GPU agents in Leningrad the second language
was Yiddish. Forty per cent of the GPU officers in Leningrad in the nineteen
20-30, they said, were Jews. Whether the percentage is accurate or not is for
me not so important as the memory of that account and what it says to my
conscience.
So, you see, we have had an
experience in Russia very different from that in the West. Of course I have no
intention of justifying anti-Semites - not even on the basis of so-called
"Jewish guilt" relating to the misfortunes of the Russian history.
From the historical point of view, there may well be the same reasons for
Jewish hatred of Christianity and the national state. Or at least there may be
reasons for Jewish indifference towards both. But the worst way possible to
discuss the issue at hand is to think and talk in terms of culpability. In
fact, we Christians can answer that question quite simply - "Everybody is
guilty because everybody has sinned". And if we try to deny this by
insisting that we are responsible only for our "individual" sins, and
need not repent for the sins of our forefathers, we betray them. It appears to
me that one of the ways in which we truly pray for our forefathers is to accept
the responsibility for their sins.
First of all, this means not repeat
those sins. For Jews, this means not being an enemy of Christianity and/or the
new Russian national state. For non-Jewish Russians, it means refusing to hate
and to accuse the Jews; for above all moral arguments, their hatred may arose
that same kind of reaction to pogroms and all manner of anti-Semitism which had
occurred even before the Revolution.
Some of our conservatives, Jewish
as well as Russian, see the emigration of Jews from Russia, especially sending
them to Israel or the USA as the best way out of this problem. But this raises
a human rights issue. Suppose a person selected for emigration does not want to
leave? Must we resort to totalitarian methods to avoid a new hatred? I do not
think that this can be justified.
Further, we must acknowledge the
fact that such hatred is a given reality of everyday life. That is why it is so
important to determine what to do about it. Jews who do not want to be hated
nor to hate can leave Russia. But Russians cannot leave Russia in order to
abstain from hating Jews who stay in Russia. (It would be unnatural in fact).
So some conservative Christians among these Russians seriously talk about
violent expulsion of Jews. Psychologically they clearly do not want to feel
hatred, but it is a fact of spiritual life. Being Christians, they maybe
unconsciously sense that hatred is a sin. But they cannot shake of that strong
feeling of hatred which is rooted in that awful wound in Russian history the
name of which is Communism and the Gulag.
I hope that this helps us to
understand that modern Christian anti-Semitism in Russia with its slogan,
"Jews leave Russia!" has a positive spiritual motive. Those Russian
Orthodox Christians do not want to feel hatred, but they do. And to rid
themselves of it, they seek violent expulsion of the Jews. They want to be in
peace with themselves, but the presence of Russian Jewry confounds them.
We must formulate the problem anew.
Western Christians feel guilty about such things as Auschwitz, when, after
cremating Jewish children, German officers received Holy Communion, as
Christians, in a nearby Church. In Russia, the situation is quite different.
Here, many of the victims were Christians and many of the executioners,
especially after the Revolution, were Jews. Herein lies an ideological source
of hatred, of anti-Semitism. But conservative Russian Orthodox survivors of
communist terror and those who share with them the burden of their past seek
for the inner peace. They do not want to hate. Still it seems that history
itself imposes upon them the necessity to hate, as if God sent the Jews to live
in Russia to show His Christian people that they lack something.
But what is it that they lack?
History would seem to doom them to hatred. But their commitment as Christians
calls them to love - not only to love for their fellow Christians but also to
love for their enemies. And that means to love for the Jews.
It is not enough to resolve the
Jewish problem negatively only - to come to not hating Jews. This is to take
the road of history, a road which finally brings Russian Christianity to
hatred. This is the road which leads to the idea of the (violent) expulsion of
the Jews. It is itself a product of hatred. And the case of Poland shows that
expulsion of Jews does not terminate anti-Semitism.
So, we liberal Christians, may need
to say our conservative brothers and sisters the following: "In our search
for justice and freedom we, liberals, often forget to seek sanctity and inner
peace as well. We admire you for seeking them. But it is a reality of our
sinful world that someone always seek to present himself as our enemy. For you,
Russians, this is the role of the Jew. But Jews are given to you by our Lord
that you may learn to love your enemies. This is how he Himself lived, and
died. And it is the only way for you to attain inner peace."
This does not mean, by the way,
that Russian Christians must out of their own spiritual resources forgive the
Jews. Human resources are absolutely inadequate for the task. Only in Christ
through the Holy Spirit is forgiveness possible.
Passionless ("apatheia")
wich is so dear to the heart of everybody who belongs to the Orthodox
Tradition, is the goal of Christian ascetism, the gates of the contamplative
life. But passionless and forgiveness are the same. It is true that only
humility can bring us to that height. But those who call the Jews (or anybody
else) the enemies of Christ, or the enemies of the Church, or the enemies of
the Russian nation, teach to not forgive; those teachers are not only far from
Christ themselves, but do not let others come to him. Those are the real "Judeoi"
of today, whom Christ has convicted.
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